SPLEEN is the personal blog of Stephen Judd

All posts tagged "midwives"

A quick bout of googleage reveals that New Zealand's infant mortality rate is pretty stable, but if anything it's been dropping slightly since 2000 (annoying Flash graph ). Which says to me that there's nothing going terribly wrong with childbirth in New Zealand, apart from a terrible fascination in the news media with grieving parents and their dead babies. So my advice to any expectant couples is: turn off your television, don't read the paper, listen to music stations and keep your browser on nice things. And have a midwife and feel good about that choice, if you want.

While I'm feeling grumpy about journalists and their inability to ask obvious questions, how about this story, which strongly implies that there is something fishy about midwives. Now what would really settle this for me is not the useless information that there have been lots of deaths under midwives' care in the last few years - of course there have been, because midwives are now the lead maternity carers at far more births. What we need to know is how death rates with midwife LMCs compare to death rates with GP LMCs. For all we know, the cases summarised in the article represent a very low rate of error and reflect just how good care is. I'm going to blame Martin Johnston for not finding this essential information.